Sunday, April 23, 2017

The April 15 "Free Speech Rally" planned by various fascist groups for Berkeley, California was both bait and trap. Black bloc and "antifa" swallowed the former and was swallowed in turn by the latter.

This isn't about courage or commitment or dedication. Nobody doubts the courage and dedication of the Black bloc or the antifascist fighters.

This isn't about whether or not Black bloc is immature, irresponsible, juvenile, disruptive, and or a giant pain in the ass.

Saturday, April 01, 2017

First and foremost he would be horrified to discover that capitalism is still around, and not just around, still dominant; more than dominant, hegemonic.

Marx would also be horrified by the use of the word "hegemonic."

Marx would be horrified to find that capitalism survived and prospered through the long deflation; WW1; the Russian Revolution; the class struggle in Germany, France, in Britain; the Spanish Civil War; the Great Depression; WW2; the declining rate of profit post 1967-1970; the collapse of the Soviet Union; and the Great Recession of 2008.

Marx would be horrified to find that capitalism had been able to expand its intrinsic barbarism so greatly with so little cost to itself, so little payback.

Marx would be horrified by all the anniversary celebrations of the publication of Capital, because all the celebrations are being conducted, stage-managed by academics, by those who call themselves, more or less, political economists, when the whole point of the critique of capitalism is the practical abolition of "political economy."

If Marx were alive, he would chase these people away when they made their pilgrimage to Highgate.

Engels would have been amused.

Marx was no April Fool. He would have known, something has gone horribly wrong.